Soon I will have a brand new server with 12 core, 32Go, RAID 5, etc...

- I would like to know if using SL6.1 with KVM + libvirt will be a good choice ? - all the RHEV suite will be included in SL6 ? - I have some worries that this solution isn't baremetal, is it justified ? - Currently there isn't any WebUI solutions for SL6.1 ? - Do you thinks that oVirt will be included in SL6 ?

1- How much are you willing to learn?KVM isn't perfect (yet) and management solutions aren't fully automated. This is a viable situation for people who have a need or desire to learn the details of the system anyway, but can be a problem for someone who just wants to click something from the GUI or installer and suddenly have a virtualization environment with everything done for him. This, of course, implies that you trust that defaults are always sane, but that's a different discussion.

2- What is your use case?This is, obviously, the most important consideration. Sweet system specs are nice, but as Darth Vader once told Bill Gates,"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to virtualize is insignificant next to the power of the Force." Depending on how you will use the system [KVM + your available resources - any deficiencies in KVM's feature set] will or will not be sufficient.

Soon I will have a brand new server with 12 core, 32Go, RAID 5, etc...

- I would like to know if using SL6.1 with KVM + libvirt will be a good choice ? - all the RHEV suite will be included in SL6 ? - I have some worries that this solution isn't baremetal, is it justified ? - Currently there isn't any WebUI solutions for SL6.1 ? - Do you thinks that oVirt will be included in SL6 ?

Thanks for your help.

- it depends on your knowledge about it, but i can only recommend it, if you're able to do some stuff from command line, it is good choice for company with handy sysadmin, since its part of distro, so its free to use on RHEL clones, our you just subscribe your RHEL to have support

- it is not part of SL, RH sell it apart of OS (as far as i know, someone may correct me on this)

- it is not baremetal, it require RHEL (or clone like SL) running on box first, but as far as i saw comparisons to VMware ESX and ESXi, it is very competitive technologically speaking, even beating in some tests

- no, the web UI is part of RHEV

- not sure

hope, it helps

I'll be helping to install RHEL 6.1 based HA (high availability) failover cluster with like 10 Kvm virtualized boxes with IBM storewize storage in like month - probably, if the company wont choose vmware (but not likely due to pricing licensing policy of vmware) so i'll be able to say more about it on some close time .. .

I would like to know if using SL6.1 with KVM + libvirt will be a good choice ?

If you are happy with the command line and you only have a few servers to manage I think it should be a good choice. I use KVM + libvirt with debian at the moment, but i am in the process of moving to SL6 as a KVM host. I you want a webgui though it might not be a good option for you.

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all the RHEV suite will be included in SL6 ?

I may be wrong, but I thought RHEV was a seperate product from RHEL. It believe it is more like vmware ESXi or Citrix Xenserver. RHEL as far as I understand things does not include all the virtualization components that are available in RHEV, and as SL6 is a clone of RHEL it will not have all the stuff that is available with RHEV.

QUOTE

I have some worries that this solution isn't baremetal, is it justified ?

I am never sure if the baremetal term is related to the debate about whether one type of virtualization technology is a type one hypervisor (or not) or whether it relates the distribution being stripped down to only the essential packages that are required for a virtualized host? I have used a RHEL 5.X clone with xen and libvirt for a while prior to switching to Debian KVM and I prefer the flexibilty that you get from using a normal linux distro as opposed to a custom stripped down distro. For example I have an apc ups that I could not connect to the free version of ESXi, and I am also able to use software raid (the linux md type) where i am too poor to be able to afford hardware raid. VMware also started to make patching ESXi a little more difficult over time. You will not encounter this issue with a standard linux distro, but if you can afford to pay VMware then I supposed this will not be a problem.

If this question is related to the type one hypervisor debate - I still feel that Xen is/was a little quicker on my old RHEL 5.X clone setup with xen + libvirt, but at this stage I think that, all things considered, KVM is the most cost effective option for linux server virtualization in small organisation.

QUOTE

Currently there isn't any WebUI solutions for SL6.1 ?

Maybe you could have a look at convirture.com. I have never tried it so I don't know whether it is any good or not. If a WUI is essential it might also be worth looking at Proxmox. Personally, i am happy enough with KVM + Libvirt and SL6 should a good base distro for this type of virtualization setup.

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Do you thinks that oVirt will be included in SL6 ?

I do not know anything about rebuilding a clone of Red Hat, but I would guess that any software that is included in any subsequent release of RHEL will ultimately become available in Scientific Linux.

*(KVM) is a Full virtualization solution for Linux on AMD64 and Intel 64 hardware.

*The KVM hypervisor in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is managed with the libvirt API and tools built for libvirt, virt-manager and virsh.

*Virtualized guests are run as Linux processes and threads which are controlled by these modules.

*virt-manager is a graphical desktop tool for managing virtualized guests. virt-manager can be used to perform virtualization administration, virtualized guest creation, migration and configuration tasks. virt-manager allows access to graphical guest consoles. virt-manager can view virtualized guests, host statistics, device information and performance graphs. virt-manager can manage the local hypervisor and remote hypervisors using the same interface and methods.

*To start virt-manager session open the Applications menu, then the System Tools menu and select Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager).

*Alternatively, virt-manager can be started remotely using ssh as demonstrated in the following command: ssh -Your host server address[yourhostserver]# virt-manager

*The virsh command-line tool is built on the libvirt management API and operates as an alternative to the graphical virt-manager application.

SE Linux or CentOS won't give you the RHEV Solution, although KVM and the management tools are fully open source hence you can get it from the comunity, of course RHEV Solution comes very customized.

The best web based GUI for libvirt and kvm environments besides virt-manager is oVirt, which is the solution that Red Hat sell as separate product. Take a look to that solution in ovirt.org it works flawless in RHEL and RHEV environments, but there are already howto's about how to make it work in CentOS and other distributions. I hope this helps.